Chevrolet Bolt owner asks for buyback and GM says yes

They say that when the going gets tough, the tough get going. That’s what Harvey Payne did with his Chevrolet Bolt. Ever since he bought it, it had been experiencing a number of issues and had to be constantly brought to the shop. Hailing from California, Payne did what few people would probably do and that is ask the automaker for a buyback.

In order to drive his point home, he made a 20-minute video revealing what has been happening and posted it on video-sharing site YouTube.

According to him, he had just recently received the Bolt from delivery when it started showing the “service vehicle soon” light. He immediately took it to his local Chevrolet dealer and not surprisingly, said light went away. Since the dealership was unable to reproduce this particular issue, it returned the vehicle to Payne. After that the light returned and it was not alone.

Other problems started cropping up. For example it went into reduced propulsion mode and even activated an initializing mode during startup. The vehicle also showed that all of the four tires did not contain air and of course, the “service vehicle soon” kept coming back. Ultimately the vehicle broke down with Payne forced to have it towed.

Because of all this, Payne asked GM for a buyback saying it was justified under Lemon laws. While these laws differ by state, they typically allow “voluntary”, or even “forced,” buyback of cars experiencing problems. The catch is that a certain amount of attempts to fix the problem had to be unsuccessful. Failing that, customers can always file a lawsuit and take the company to court. In order to avoid the second option, most automakers will often agree on the buyback choice.

In the case of Payne, it was days after he had contacted GM when he finally got an answer that the company would do just that. Payne, now with his new Bolt, thanked both the manufacturer and the dealer for handling this particular issue in an “awesome” manner.

And sure enough, just a couple of days after contacting the automaker, the video uploader and owner of the problematic Bolt said GM would do just that. According to Payne, the manufacturer and his local dealer were “awesome” in handling the situation, and he’s currently enjoying life with his second new Bolt.

The Chevrolet Bolt, also known as the Bolt EV, is a subcompact vehicle that is powered solely with electricity. Marketed in Europe as the Opel Ampera-e, this vehicle went into production last November 2016.

Since then it has won a number of awards like the 2017 North American Car of the Year and the 2017 Motor Trend Car of the Year award. It was also the Green Car Reports Best Car To Buy 2017 and the AutoGuide.com Reader’s Choice 2017 Green Car of the Year.